His entry begins:
Everything We Could Do is set in a hospital -- specifically within a small, locked unit inside the hospital. In the neonatal intensive care unit, the premature infants spend weeks and months on end inside climate and temperature controlled incubators, technically called Isolettes. The story's setting is a kind of Russian doll: tiny humans inside of pods inside of pods inside of pods. The people in the story, accordingly, struggle with isolation but also form deep, deep bonds with their other pod mates. A close friend, who teaches Russian literature, quipped that the story is like "Tolstoy in space."About Everything We Could Do, from the publisher:
In the course of writing Everything We Could Do, I spent a lot of time diving into books about hospitals as well as stories set in remote places. I grew sort of addicted to them, and several of those books I've read multiple times, cover to cover. The best example is Michael Ruhlman's Walk on Water: The Miracle of Saving Children's Lives. Walk on Water is a nonfiction book written more than 20 years ago, that's set in a pediatric heart surgery center in Cleveland. The doctor at the center of the story is among the most proficient and accomplished surgeons in the world at repairing congenital heart defects in newborn and very small children. But the book is about the surgical center, not just one guy. The stories Ruhlman tell are incredibly harrowing -- with...[read on]
Set against the backdrop of a small-town Wisconsin NICU, a sweeping story of parenthood, family, and redemptionVisit David McGlynn's website.
After a decade of miscarriages, Brooke Jensen is finally pregnant—with quadruplets. When she goes into labor after twenty-three weeks,Brooke and her husband rush to the hospital in the small town of Hanover, Wisconsin. For the 203 days that follow, they’re plunged into the terrifying and mysterious netherworld of the neonatal intensive care unit.
As the babies grow and struggle, fall turns to stark upper-Midwest winter. Brooke bonds with Dash, a senior nurse whose son, Landon, had been a patient in the NICU years earlier and is now straining his parents’ abilities to care for him. Both families bend and edge closer to breaking, and the questions mount: What does love look like? What does it mean to save a life?
A fiercely honest portrait of American parenthood, the American healthcare system, and Rust Belt communities, Everything We Could Do lays bare the ways that families are formed and remade in times of crisis.
Writers Read: David McGlynn.
--Marshal Zeringue
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